The more general news is that The Escapist's editor-in-chief (who has turned the company and its public reputation around very noticeably over the last few years) was sacked a few days ago by the Escapist's most recent corporate overlords, and a whole bunch of his co-workers (including the entire Escapist video staff) quit in solidarity with him, and they're starting their own YouTube-&-Twitch-centric company, called Second Wind. Since Yahtzee Croshaw was one of those resigning, and The Escapist retains the rights to the "Zero Punctuation" name, he'll have to start a new series. It'll apparently be called "Fully Ramblomatic" (after his old blog), and will still be animated, and likely otherwise pretty similar to ZP.

I had heard nothing about this until YouTube recommended me a VOD of a livestream from Wednesday that I clicked into just because Yahtzee was in it, and I was curious about the mysterious title. I was rather confused after they started to allude to "the crazy events of the last few days", and Google results filled me in some more. Here's hoping this will enlighten others who don't really have much to do with social media, who maybe occasionally watch ZP, and don't keep up on VG industry news.

Yong Yea covered this just yesterday

Honestly i don't think Escapist or the company can do much about Zero Punctuation as a whole; Because Yahtzee is loved and it's his voice unique voice and humor we flock to. Also the animations are LITERALLY just circles squares pasted images and basic shapes put in a way that's hilarious as he makes cock jokes, so much I'm not sure it's copyrightable/trademarkable. Though likely the animator who is working on it may have to remake his assets, or may just switch to a modified style, maybe with laser nipple unicorn vikings.

Zee Bashew a few years ago split from whatever company he was with and said he had to remake all his assets for his videos as he couldn't reuse them. But ZP was very simple in style.

And he could just rename it to 'absent punctuation' or Croshaw's cock and balls rants on video games, and we'd still love it regardless. I doubt he'd remake any videos of old stuff, and would likely reference the old stuff but as minimally as possible.

I used to love The Escapist in their original form when they were an honest-to-goodness online gaming magazine with some lovely spreads and articles. But that was long, long ago, and ZP was really the only thing keeping me around these days. Way to kneecap and shoot themselves in their feet all in one.

Hell, most of the other notable video creators they had jumped ship years ago due to continued mismanagement as the company kept getting passed around from one owner to the next. I'm surprised Croshaw stuck around as long as he did.

P.S. What kind of terrible name is "Gamurs" (their current owners) anyway? I couldn't take any business serious that sounds like they were named by some wannabe dudebro twelve-year-old.

The first episode of the "new" series (with the old, old name) came out today, covering Alan Wake 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyGhI_JVOZI

It's basically just ZP with a different paint job -- though I thought the outro music was noticeably worse than ZP's. Aside from that gripe, the episode was quite good.

I've always been a fan of ZP although it can be difficult to fully understand everything for a non-native speaker. It's good to see that he kept his style and that he does his own thing now instead of giving it up :)

The first episode was really good!

Sometimes ZP has allowed politics to shape the reviews a little too much, but other than that, I love Yahtzee.

Phew, the Cold Take guy went over to the new channel as well, neat! :)

Used to watch Yahtzee more often, especially when he did his Let's Play/Drown Outs, but I've only watched ZP every so often since then. Doesn't help he's been around forever doing pretty much the same thing.

Wot? The outro music kicks ass in FR! Soooo much better than in ZP. I just rewinded the video to hear it again, seriosuly.

Also, the video was good and yeah, same content as before but with slightly different graphics.

Yep, literally the entire Escapist video team (as it was at the beginning of last week's shitstorm) is part of Second Wind. What's more, Frost brought the Cold Take IP to the Escapist with him, and retained ownership of it when he quit. So that series will be continued on the new channel with the same name and few, if any, other changes. YMMV, of course. I just don't like most modern heavy metal, and there were some extra weird elements mixed in that I didn't care for, either.

Yeah, I listened to their first stream in which they announced which people got on board and which IPs they got to keep, I'm quite happy. :)

He's been participating in livestreams on the Escapist YouTube channel for the last handful of years, including the post-ZP stream (that's more or less what it was officially called), where he played some more of whatever game(s) he reviewed in the newest episode while talking with one of the Escapist's other video personalities. They recently revamped that to allow him to instead play two or three other games which he'd never played before and wouldn't be reviewing on ZP. I guess they're planning on bringing that idea to the new Second Wind livestream channel at some point, too.

I liked his and Gabriel's dynamic and I don't care for livestreams so I never caught on to those, but as I alluded to my attention the past few years has been elsewhere and... how long has it been since I discovered him? 13 years ago? I had turned into a legal adult at that point. The shtick ran its course much the same way I completely stopped watching AVGN a long ass time ago.

Hmmm watched the Alan Wake 2 review.

A bit slower paced, and a bit lighter on the jokes but maybe that's because he wanted to keep it tamer for the first one.

He has a dog now in the background, the backgrounds swap every 30-40 seconds to some other colored background with gears or saying 'ramblomatic', the boots on all characters is grey or black; Lots more clip-art being used than before; So much has to say 'yep this isn't zero punctuation everyone, nothing to see'. He also took on the look of Indiana Jones, with that hat and the first 3-4 buttons on top open on the shirt, which doesn't do much.

Have to see in the next 4-5 reviews as they get back into the groove and change of art direction and snarkiness balances out.